Escaping the city for lazy leisure time

As you turn into the driveway, the lovely lakeside family retreat grabs your attention.

This is a family getaway full of fun, wrapped in nature. Walking up to the front door you pass under a sheltered porch made of stripped logs. It’s no wonder the homeowners’ shoulders fall half an inch the second they step through the door.

Inside, the true unique nature of this home away from home hits you. There, above the heated, Indian autumn slate floors of the bright entryway, is a bridge, connecting the new wing of the cottage to the gutted and renovated pre-existing structure.

Bathed in colour! This charming cottage is full of the personality of a family of five. Vacations and weekends are spent bonding in this playfully unique haven on a secluded lake outside of Parry Sound. The small fruit and vegetable canvas paintings in the kitchen, set along the ceiling beam, are part of a collection of art the family purchased on a trip to Cuba. Splashes of colour like this are found throughout the home, giving a comfortable and fun feel to each space.

With the combined help of a builder and architects, the owners transformed the original 20 ft. by 30 ft. A-frame Lindal Kit Home, built in the early 70s, into a family cottage. The lower level 1,200 sq. ft. addition includes a foyer, laundry room with dog shower, two bedrooms and TV room, while the 800 sq. ft. upstairs includes two additional rooms and storage.

They wanted to keep the original loft above the main living area, but also wanted to find a way to get to the loft and kids’ bedrooms without building two staircases. That’s when architects, Matt and Brenda Ryan of FAD, planned the feature element. “We thought by connecting the two sections with the bridge we’d make better use of the space,” says Matt.

Builder Dave Gibson of Gibson Homes and Cottages Inc. built the bridge, a first in his career, connecting the second floor bedrooms and storage wall to the loft above the kitchen.

The bridge connects the two sections of the cottage in a unique design. Constructed from engineered wood beam and wood decking with metal railings by Barker’s Welding, the suspended hallway adds architectural interest to the vacation home, carrying the wooden fir floors from the addition to the main house.

The living room is open, with a view of the kitchen, dining room and loft. There is ample seating for the family and guests. The window seating in the corner includes storage for games and cozy blankets.

The loft serves as the perfect place for the family’s three kids to enjoy their own space yet keep communication open with their parents in the living room below. This extra room made the perfect sweet 16 birthday party location last January for the owners’ eldest daughter, containing eight 16-year-old girls with ease.

The bedroom wing, accessed by a 100-year-old door found in the cottage and fixed to a sliding rail to match the bridge floating above, was angled inwards to orient the whole home with a view of the lake.

“The hardest part of the whole project for us was making all the lines match up,” says Gibson. With 1,100 ft. of waterfront, 11 acres around the cottage and 170 acres across the lake, no one can impose on the owners’ secluded retreat. “It’s quite private,” they say.

This privacy allows for the kids’ favourite summer activity, swimming across the lake to the rock face and choosing from a variety of daunting heights to jump from into the dark lake below.

The homeowners, who live and work in Toronto, found the dream cottage-to-be while vacationing at a neighbour’s nearby lodge on an adjoining lake. “We just fell in love with the place, the piece of land and the quiet setting,” they say.

“It’s still just a magic place, even more so now that it’s complete.”

Even the exterior of this hideaway is accented with colour. The original A-frame cottage has been gutted and renovated. An addition, angled to share the view of the lake with the original structure and deck.

The owners had seen their fair share of large cottages in the area but wanted something smaller for their family, following architect Susan Susanka’s Not So Big House advice. “We had been doing design thinking for many years,” say the owners. “We wanted something on a very human scale and cozier, so Matt and Brenda worked with us on that.” The architects understood the owners’ desire for an intimate setting. “Instead of one great room they have a variety of spaces,” says Matt.

Although the owners were adamant about keeping as much of the original structure as possible, Gibson ran into rotting walls and unstable supports upon closer inspection. Beams were used to hold the roof up while walls were torn out and the entire building was reconstructed. Construction started in the fall of 2005, was interrupted by moose and deer season, and was completed by the following June. The roof, loft and deck are the only original structures remaining from the old cottage.

The kitchen’s hickory mission-style cabinetry, painted a soothing sage green, is inviting and perfect for displaying the family’s Cape Breton folk art and a collection of porcupine quill boxes from Wolf Den in Parry Sound. The painted ceiling beams have been decorated with small fruit and vegetable paintings from Cuba. An island sharing the kitchen with the living room offers a place to sip coffee and enjoy breakfast on rustic, carved bark benches under maple leaf pendant lighting. Above, two hooked rugs by a Cape Breton textile artist hang from the loft railing.

The living room ceilings reach beyond the loft to the peaked ceiling above. The family gathers in this room to enjoy the wood fireplace and spend some quality time together. The Chinese checkers board is a coffee table staple, while Scrabble sits waiting with extra blankets under the window bench.

The suspended hallway leads from the bedroom wing, over the front foyer and into the original loft, connecting the old cottage with the new addition. The bridge is an unusual feature and was a first for builder, Dave Gibson.

The dining room table, fashioned by Harris Furniture and Antiques from weathered 40-year-old barn board, spans the length of the window benches with additional seating found in the original cottage, each chair painted a vibrant red by a member of the family.

The homeowners frequently escape the city to their waterfront, fourseason cottage outside of Parry Sound on weekends throughout the year, and celebrate the holidays snowshoeing and cross-country skiing around and across the lake.

Rainy days are spent in the two large, screened-in porches facing the water. Covered with 40-year asphalt shingles to match the roofing on the cottage and raised by stripped red pine posts from Muskoka Timber Mills, this additional living space provides for a family ping pong match or some reading, bug free. The original, open deck has been left intact, one of few remaining structural traits of the small A-frame cottage.

“There was a lot of neat stuff that I hadn’t necessarily done before. It was kind of a refreshing challenge,” says Gibson. “They really just wanted the house to be fun.”

The finished product is the ideal place for this family to put their feet up and breathe in the cool, fresh air after a long week of busy city life.